Assessment of the Feasibility of Applying the Electromagnetic Time Reversal Theory to Locate Defects in Grounding Electrodes

In recent years, the electromagnetic time reversal (EMTR) theory has been successfully applied for locating various sources of disturbances, such as short-circuit faults, in power systems. In this paper, a theoretical analysis of the feasibility of applying EMTR to locate defects (corrosion and break points) in grounding systems is presented. An EMTR algorithm to locate faults in buried grounding wires is proposed and a comprehensive analysis with respect to some salient influencing parameters, for instance, the ground conductivity, medium losses, the defect location and type (soft or hard), is carried out. According to the obtained results, the proposed method appears to be very promising for real applications. The need for experimental validation to confirm the applicability of this method is emphasized.